The idea of punishing Pakistan for sending terrorists to strike at targets in India was mulled during the UPA rule after 10 terrorists of Lashkar-e-Toiba had attacked multiple locations in Mumbai on September 26 in 2008.

A surgical strike on Jamat-ul-dawah – a seminary cum terrorist recruitment center run by the Lashkar head and cleric close to Pakistan army Hafiz Saeed at Muridke near Lahore - would have been an appropriate response to the three-day blood bath carried out by terrorists leaving over 160, including nationals of five countries, dead and 308 wounded. Due to the enormity of the crime perpetrated by terrorists, who were Pakistani citizens, India would have received a huge global support.

But the surgical strike didn’t happen, for the coalition government of UPA headed by Manmohan Singh was not ready to risk escalation of tensions with Pakistan. Instead of knocking the Muridke township off the map, the UPA government had then chosen to augment country’s defenses against such terrorist strikes. The National Investigating Agency had emerged out of this decision.
READ: Meanwhile on Twitter, Indians and Pakistanis go to war

So, it’s for the first time that India’s elite Special Forces have crossed the line of control, the 800 km de facto border, that was the ceasefire line ordered by the United Nations security council between the two nations after Pakistan had attacked India with the intention of grabbing Kashmir, barely a year after the partition.

A surgical strike is not a conventional warfare but a limited offensive aimed at destroying targets which are inimical to the security of the country undertaking it. So, Pakistan can’t take the four-hour strike as India’s war cry and escalate tension in the region.

Pakistan’s denial of the operation is along the expected lines, as it has never owned up terrorists, or their presence in the border outposts along the LoC, which are launch pads of terrorists headed to Kashmir. Remember, Pakistan has not even accepted that Ajmal Kasab, who had to hang for Mumbai attack in Yerwada jail in 2012, as its national. How would the army and Nawaz Sharif government, which is facing shame of countries boycotting SAARC meet in Islamabad, would accept that Indian army had indeed attacked terrorist camps-cum-border outposts of Pakistan army?

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